Remember You Are Mortal, Remember You Will Die
by Min Daae
Summary: Pre-series. Brian is really looking forward to seeing his little brother. He just has to set everything up perfectly. High-T.


"I'm seeing my brother soon." He wrinkled his nose slightly. "Well, relatively. A couple weeks, perhaps."

There was a muffled noise from the table, and the man, somewhere in his thirties, glanced downward, but only briefly. "My younger brother…how long has it been? Years. Too long." For a moment, an expression that might be described as 'faintly mutinous' flickered across handsome features. "And through no choice of mine…"

Another muffled noise, and this time he turned fully, resting his hands on either side of the head of the young woman wriggling against her bonds. He smiled slightly at her, a curiously empty expression. "I wonder how he does this," he murmured. "If he kills quickly or slowly, what his tools of choice are…neat, certainly, I know that." He sighed, gazed unseeing down at the panicked gaze directed up at him, somewhere between regretful and hopeful. "Well, in time."

He lifted the knife he was holding in his right hand and examined it for a moment, almost disinterested, and then looked around the room. Clean, almost bare, the metal shelving on one side the only furnishing to be spoken of.

"It's a nice room, isn't it?" He said to his captive audience. "Very useful. I had it specially built. Just for…well, this. Though that's not what I said, obviously." He gave the young woman another self-satisfied, faintly amused little smile that didn't touch his dark and empty eyes. "I hope I'm not boring you. This is all fairly important to me. Just as you are. In your own way, you're actually going to help me quite a bit."

Another, more frantic squirm, and a slightly more panicked noise. Goosebumps rose on her skin. "You're going to ruin your wrists like that," he murmured. "Which would completely defeat the purpose. Mmm." He chewed his lip, an all too human gesture.

"I've worked it out," he continued, fingers playing over the control box resting on one of the shelves before pulling away. "I need to draw him out, make him interested. I don't think he even knows I exist…_Harry _probably didn't see fit to mention it." He glanced over at the woman, whose eyes were squeezed closed. "I hope you're listening, and not praying. I find it rather tedious when people pray, even silently. Thus far, God seems to have been fairly silent."

The woman's eyes opened wide and rolled over, pleading, but the man had already turned away, running one hand through his dark and slightly curling hair. "Harry's the man who adopted him," he said, apparently by way of clarification. "Who separated us. But I came back. Late, but not too late. He's just like me, you know." His lips curled and this time, his eyes lit with almost innocent satisfaction. "_Just _like me…"

He trailed off, sounding pleased, and hummed a few bars of something unidentifiable, setting the knife down, picking it back up, glancing at his wrist and then at the clock on the wall. "Just a little bit longer," he informed the girl. "I promise I won't keep you waiting."

He tapped his fingers absently against her bare leg, slid them briefly upwards, watching her face, and laughed as her eyes squeezed closed. "No," he murmured, almost absently, "No, I don't think so."

Another pause, and a brief silence as the man paced in another slow circle, his gait easy and predatory, a tiger well at home in its cave. "I wonder what he'll be like, though," he said again. "Other than…the obvious. He's my brother. My little brother, and I hardly know him. Do you know your family? No, I expect not. No one misses the people of the street." His eyebrows quirked, and arched slightly in a way that had the rather strange effect of making his face look both younger and lighter, almost sweet. "Isn't that right?"

The young woman closed her eyes and shuddered.

The man looked up at the clock again, and smiled the strange and genuine smile again, brushing hair almost tenderly off the woman's forehead. "All right, then," he said, "Time to get started." He leaned down as though to kiss her, and murmured, just over her face, "If it helps…you can die knowing you're reuniting a family."

She struggled again, made a soft whimpering sound through the gag in her mouth. "Do you want to know his name?" He murmured, just barely pulling away. "Dexter Morgan. Blood spatter analyst to the Miami Metro Homicide department." He reached for the control box, and smiled a little wider. "And my brother."

He tilted the table carefully to just the right angle, picked up the knife, and slashed through her throat in one smooth movement, smiling slightly as he watched the blood drain into the trough and listened to the gurgling, choking sound of another life ending.

He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of blood, then glanced down at his clothes. Ruined. Next time he would make sure he was protected from the spray. But it wasn't too much of a problem. This did, after all, mark the end of an era.

Of loneliness. Of solitude.

He had a fellow hunter to draw out.

He pulled the ID out of his pocket and examined it again. Rudy Cooper. A perfectly ordinary name for a perfectly ordinary man. "Dexter Morgan," he said, finally, and then frowned, and said, "Dexter _Moser._"

"Family should always stick together," he told the young woman lying on the table, now still, her eyes staring up at the ceiling even as her blood continued to drain out of her body. He watched for a few moments longer, then reached out and turned on the stereo as he reached into a black bag in the corner and removed a bone saw with the utmost care.

"Now then," he said, as the sound of Andy Williams filled the small room. "I think it's time we got started."

In three hours, Miami Metro would find the dismembered, bloodless corpse in a drained swimming pool, laid out with the utmost care and precision. Brian smiled.

Everything was going to be…glorious.

~.~

He had never really been afraid. That didn't change now. Though he was, ever so slightly, disappointed.

_Oh, Dexter. You could have been more than this, with me. _

He was lying on his own metal table, and he was almost tempted to laugh at Dexter's need for symmetry, but he could appreciate it himself. He smiled, slightly, up at the ceiling. Much more range of motion was currently beyond his reach.

"Family," he said, "Should always stick-"

Dexter, he discovered, liked to end things quickly. He didn't let his eyes close.

He could have told Dexter how lonely he's going to be. What kind of mistake he was making. He could have apologized, or asked for forgiveness.

But he didn't.


End file.
